Housing Blogs

Radio Netherlands reports from California. “In Los Angeles, at the heart of the American dream, the economic malaise can be seen on the streets. There are For sale signs in the gardens all over the place. And on many of them the word ‘foreclosure’ has been added - forced sale. This is the case with a third of all houses on the market. And this problem looks likely to increase in the years to come. Forced sale was also hanging above the head of 60-year-old Nordik, originally from Armenia. (He does not want his surname published.)”
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1)       Town of Taos Council Briefing Session, Tuesday, April 1 (tomorrow) – agenda attached.
2)       Town of Taos special Study Session, Thursday, April 3 – agenda attached.
3)       Recent coverage clips about Taos….
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Few would argue that the Taos real estate market has followed the rest of the nation into a slump.  True, it isn’t as deep, and I don’t think it will last as long as other areas.  However, it is definitely here.  Prices are softening, though not dramatically.  Number of sales is definitely down considerably if compared to a couple of years ago.
When listing a property, the discussion might turn to offering a higher than normal commission to buyer brokers to help get it sold faster.  I’ll set aside my dislike of this concept, considering that it seems to indicate that a buyer agent will somehow steer or convince a buyer to plunk down hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get more commission into their pocket.  I’m not saying they might not try to do that…just that I don’t think they can push their buyers around in that way.
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From Bloomberg: Lehman to Sell $3 Billion of Shares to Institutional Investors (hat tip Tim) Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. … is selling at least $3 billion of new shares to U.S. institutions to reassure investors it has ample access to capital. Here are the details from the press release: L…
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Senate Democratic leaders charged Monday that more needs to be done, and quickly, to address the foreclosure crisis that is sucking down the nation’s economy.
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I hope those of you who like to make a punching bag out of my employer (no, not Sam Zell, the Los Angeles Times) have noticed that the newspaper continues to publish full-throated, anti-bailout opinion pieces.
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Countrywide issued a communication to its brokers today limiting compensation on all loans to Countrywide to 4 points, including yield spread premium (back points or YSP).  While 4 points may seem egregious to some, it is the first step at banks actively restricting total compensation to brokers above and beyond traditional federal and state guidelines.  
The following is an Important Message regarding Broker Compensation….
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Read full story for latest details.
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Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. Bloomberg, “Northern Rock Plc, lost 243.5 million pounds ($483.4 million) in the 12 months ended Dec. 31, the company said in its annual report published today. ‘The 2007 results reflect the impact of deteriorating market conditions and the effects of significant liquidity and funding constraints on the company,’ the Newcastle, England-based bank said. The company doesn’t plan to erase losses until 2011.”
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Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. Bloomberg, “Northern Rock Plc, lost 243.5 million pounds ($483.4 million) in the 12 months ended Dec. 31, the company said in its annual report published today. ‘The 2007 results reflect the impact of deteriorating market conditions and the effects of significant liquidity and funding constraints on the company,’ the Newcastle, England-based bank said. The company doesn’t plan to erase losses until 2011.”
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Selling a home is expensive — especially after agents take their 5% or 6% cut. But as we reported on March 20, some Realtors have started charging commissions of as much as 8% to make up for the time and expense involved in finding buyers during the worst housing market in years.
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Selling a home is expensive — especially after agents take their 5% or 6% cut. But as we reported on March 20, some Realtors have started charging commissions of as much as 8% to make up for the time and expense involved in finding buyers during the worst housing market in years.

Sellers who agree to pay the hefty agent fees are sometimes given premium services, such as home staging, media blitzes and guarantees that the house will be sold within a month or two. But the higher commissions are intended primarily to give agents an incentive to direct buyers to the property and to play up the pros and play down the cons.
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How to get top-shelf looks without spending top dollar on popular home-improvement projects.
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We’re a victim of our own success. A little less than three years ago I wrote an entry to this blog, titled “Washington DC Bubble?” that was fueled off of a return visit to D.C., where I lived for nine years (’89 to ’98). We were visiting old friends over Spring Break, and one of the houses next to my old place was on the market – for more than $500,000! (We’d sold our house for $228,000 in late 1998.) I went through the Nine Levels of Sellers Remorse, unable to believe how much money we’d “left on the table,” but after I calmed down, and did more thinking and more research about the DC housing market, I came to this inescapable conclusion: The Washington market was a big soapy bubble that at some point would pop.
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The next time you are trying to impress your friends by telling them how much bad debt America’s banks are choking on (It’s $400 billion, I tell you!), you can trot out this new estimate: $1 trillion. Yes, that’s trillion with a "t." A thousand billion, if you prefer.
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Remember when the Shanghai stock market declined 9% on Feb 27, 2007? That caused shock waves around the world, including a 400 points decline in the DOW index the following day. Well, that was nothing and hardly shows up on the following graph.…
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(click on the chart for a sharper image)It looks like we are heading for round three of the credit crunch. UK interbank interest rate spreads are again rising. As of March 28, banks needed to pay 98 basis points more to borrow 3 month money relative to a 3 month repo using UK government paper. Back in good old days when banks trusted each other, the spread ranged from between 9-12 basis points. …
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You’ve probably heard about the foreclosure tours that are becoming common in places like Las Vegas and Sacramento. Well it looks like they have finally arrived in the Northwest.
Thurston County foreclosure notices have increased more than 50 percent in the first quarter of 2008 compared with the same period last year, prompting one real estate agent to begin offering tours of homes in various stages of foreclosure.
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Posted By:Diana OlickI realize today all the headlines are about the Paulson plan to re-regulate the nation’s financial systems in order to prevent the current credit crisis brought on by the recent housing boom. But that’s all about the future.    …
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Posted By:Diana OlickI realize today all the headlines are about the Paulson plan to re-regulate the nation’s financial systems in order to prevent the current credit crisis brought on by the recent housing boom. But that’s all about the future.    …
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